I grew up in a Christian home going to church every week, sometimes more than once a week, but by the time I became a teenager I had become disillusioned with church. It no longer seemed relevant to my life. I realized that most of the people I knew in church were fake, they pretended that everything in their life was ok when clearly it wasn’t. My perception was that for most people it was more important to look good than to do good, and it wasn’t ok to struggle or have problems, so if you did have problems you had better cover them up as quickly as possible. I learned that Christianity was more about appearances than substance so by the time I was old enough to drive a car I pretty much dropped out of church. I would still go occasionally to appease my parents but in my mind church was irrelevant!
It wasn’t until college that I discovered what Christian Community is supposed to be like. About my 4th year of school I had started attending church again so that I could meet women, but what I found instead was a group of guys that were authentic, genuine and real, they cared about me and were willing to invest their lives in mine. They didn’t care about my past or my struggles they just encouraged me to love and serve Jesus. I have discovered that this is a rare quality, even in Christian circles.
My dream for Jacob’s Well is that we will become a people who really care about one another. That as Christ-followers we will learn to live like Jesus, not just study his teachings. At Jacob’s Well we say that we are about Knowing God, Loving People and Transforming Lives. I believe that this is done when we not only study and teach the Bible, but when we put it into practice. At Jacob’s Well we are all about Jesus, we believe that he is God, that he became a man so that he could seek and save sinful people like you and me, that he died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins and that by trusting in him we can have eternal life. Jesus calls people who believe in him to become his disciples or followers. As followers of Jesus we want to do what he did, to know God, love people and transform lives.
Jesus knew God the father intimately, he spent time studying the Old Testament scriptures, praying and worshiping God. In the same way as his followers we want to get to know God intimately to study and know the bible to pray frequently and to worship intensely. As a church we will do this both individually and corporately as a community. We will preach straight through books of the Bible so that we can better know and understand God’s Word. We will gather together for prayer and for worship where our focus is directed on Jesus and not on ourselves.
Jesus loves people, our name Jacob’s Well comes from a story where Jesus met a Samaritan woman at a place called Jacob’s Well, she was an outcast in her own community, yet Jesus broke all the cultural rules of the day to accept her and to reach out in love and give her hope. At Jacob’s Well people of all cultural, ethnic and spiritual backgrounds are welcome to come experience the love of God without fear of rejection or ridicule. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you have done or where you have been, we believe that God accepts you as you are and loves you more than you can imagine.
Jesus also transforms lives. The Bible tells us that Jesus came to seek and save that which was lost and that he came to serve not to be served. Through his entire ministry Jesus was in the business of helping and serving people and pointing them to the truth that would change their lives. The Samaritan woman at the Well was transformed by her encounter with Jesus, no longer was she the rejected outcast who had to walk to the well alone in shame, now she was a redeemed child of God who was loved and cherished by Jesus. At Jacob’s Well we want to see lives transformed by an encounter with a holy and loving God. We will follow Jesus by intentionally seeking and serving those who do not yet know him. We consider this a great privilege and solemn responsibility that has been entrusted to us. Jesus is still seeking and saving the lost, but now he is using the church as his hands and feet.
